Chapter 69 : The Apology Cookie
The smell of scorched sugar filled the apartment like a declaration of war.
Revantra stood over the tiny stove, brow furrowed, wooden spoon gripped like a battle axe. The mixing bowl beside her looked as though it had been through at least one minor magical explosion, and flour dust clung to her arms and cheeks like the aftermath of a failed summoning ritual.
"I don't understand," she muttered to herself. "I followed the instructions exactly."
To the letter, she had. Which, in hindsight, might have been part of the problem—she'd interpreted "softly fold in the flour" as fold with forceful efficiency and "chill dough for twenty minutes" as skip that, who has time for weak mortal traditions.
The result was an oblong lump of... technically edible material, bubbling on the baking tray with an almost sentient wobble.
It was going to be a cookie.
Maybe.
If the universe was forgiving.
The recipe, she'd found buried in the back of the cupboard, wedged between a crusty tea-stained notebook and an aggressively cheerful pamphlet titled Healthy Meals for Magic Menders! The margins were filled with scribbled notes in Elias's tidy handwriting. Things like "reduce sugar," "bake shorter for softness," and, unhelpfully, "don't stress—just have fun!"
Revantra had taken one look at the last line and scoffed aloud. Baking was not fun. It was alchemy. Precise, delicate, utterly fragile—and she was a fire elemental with the patience of a sleep-deprived hornet.
But after yesterday's... incident, involving a certain red-haired healer and a molten door handle, she'd woken up with an unfamiliar twist in her stomach.